Monday, November 28, 2016

WARNING: this article's headline makes the overall mortgage rate situation sound much better than it actually is. While it is indeed a fact that today's rates are lower than the previous business day's rates by the widest margin since Brexit, caveats abound. First off, the Brexit move was more than twice as big. Today's move is only slightly better than a handful of other decent days over the past 5 months.

The post-Brexit move also occurred when rates were already fairly low. In fact, rates were near all-time lows already, and had been moving almost exclusively lower all year. In stark contrast, today's improvement comes on the heels of one of the sharpest moves higher in history. It's fairly normal to see a decent-sized correction after a huge spike higher.
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Bottom line: it was a great individual day for rates, but we're still very much in the "new normal" range of conventional 30yr fixed rates between 4% and 4.25%. emphasis added

• At 9:00 AM, S&P/Case-Shiller House Price Index for September. Although this is the September report, it is really a 3 month average of July, August and September prices. The consensus is for a 5.2% year-over-year increase in the Comp 20 index for September. The Zillow forecast is for the National Index to increase 5.4% year-over-year in September.